How to Retarget and Re-Engage Inactive Subscribers

Over time, a portion of your subscribers will stop opening or clicking your emails. This is completely normal — inboxes fill up, priorities shift, and interests evolve. Rather than continuing to send to unengaged contacts — which drags down your metrics and harms your sender reputation — Mailzzy gives you tools to identify inactive subscribers and run targeted campaigns designed to win their attention back.

Why Inactive Subscribers Are a Problem

Inbox providers track how recipients interact with your emails. A list with a significant proportion of contacts who never open, click, or engage sends a consistent negative signal that your emails are not valued. Over time, this contributes to:

• Lower overall open rates and click rates, which reduce your sender score

• Increased likelihood of your campaigns being filtered to the spam folder

• Inflated contact counts that make your list appear healthier than it actually is

• Higher sending costs if you are paying based on list size or send volume

Addressing inactivity proactively is one of the most effective deliverability maintenance practices available.

Step 1: Identify Your Inactive Contacts

Before you can re-engage inactive subscribers, you need to identify them. In Mailzzy, you can find inactive contacts by filtering your list based on engagement data. A common definition of inactive is a contact who has not opened or clicked any of your emails in the past 90 to 180 days.

1. Go to Contacts and use the filter options to isolate contacts based on last engagement date or campaign interaction.
2. Apply filters such as “Not opened in the last 90 days” or “No clicks in the last 6 months”.
3. Review the resulting list. This is your inactive segment.
4. Tag these contacts with a label such as “Inactive – Q2 2025” so you can track and manage them separately.

Step 2: Use Mailzzy’s Retarget Feature

Mailzzy’s Retarget feature is purpose-built for reaching back out to contacts who did not engage with a previous campaign. After sending a campaign, you can identify which recipients did not open or click and create a follow-up campaign targeting only that group.

1. Open the campaign report for a recently sent campaign.
2. Look for the Retarget or Re-Engage option in the campaign report actions.
3. Select the audience you want to retarget — for example, contacts who did not open the original campaign.
4. Create a new campaign for this audience. Adjust the subject line and consider refreshing the content or offer.
5. Schedule or send the retargeted campaign.

Step 3: Build a Re-Engagement Campaign

A re-engagement campaign is a short sequence of emails designed specifically to recapture inactive subscribers’ attention. The goal is to remind them why they subscribed and give them a compelling reason to engage again.

Elements of an effective re-engagement campaign:

• An honest subject line – Acknowledge the gap directly. Something like “We miss you — is this still useful?” tends to outperform clever or deceptive subject lines for this audience.

• A clear value reminder – Remind the contact what they signed up for and what they have been missing. Show the value you deliver.

• An incentive or exclusive offer – A discount, free resource, or early access offer gives inactive subscribers a practical reason to click.

• A clear CTA – Make it easy to re-engage. One focused call to action works better than multiple competing options.

• An opt-out option – Consider including an option to update preferences or unsubscribe gracefully. It is better to lose an inactive contact voluntarily than to have them mark your email as spam.

Step 4: Act on the Results

After your re-engagement campaign runs, review the results and take action:

• Contacts who opened or clicked should be moved back into your active segments and treated as re-engaged

• Contacts who did not respond to the re-engagement sequence after 2 to 3 attempts should be suppressed or removed from your active list

Removing non-responders is not a failure — it is good list hygiene that improves the performance and reputation of your remaining sends.